


Only On Days That End In 'Y'

by SuiGeneris221B



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: MFMM Flashfic Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 02:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18459515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuiGeneris221B/pseuds/SuiGeneris221B
Summary: Phryne relives memories in her garden





	Only On Days That End In 'Y'

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little late and I'm sorry. Also, please don't hate me. K, thx.

April, 1962

“Phryne?” She started, having been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard anyone behind her. 

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just came to say goodbye. Ben and I have to get going if we’re going to catch our flight and…”

“It’s alright, Jane.” Phryne slowly stood up from the garden bench and turned to face her daughter. “It’s time you were getting back to your lives.”

“You know I’ll stay longer if you need me. I’ll tell the University that I need to be here and they can get someone else to teach my classes.”

“No. Your students need you and Ben needs his wife back home. You’ve been here long enough.” She tried smiling but her face seemed to have forgotten just how to do that. She wasn’t sure when it would relearn the skill.

Throwing her arms around Phryne, Jane squeezed until they were both gasping for air. If she could have done so, Jane would have squeezed until Phryne’s pain was gone. She would have gladly taken it all. Phryne gently but firmly extricated herself from Jane’s grasp and took her hand, both walking back to the house in silence. Autumn had arrived and everything looked like the sunset. The golds and oranges and reds were all aflame but would soon fade. It was one more loss that Phryne didn’t think she had in her to handle, but she wouldn’t tell Jane anything of the sort.

It wasn’t until she and Ben had left in their cab that Phryne returned to the garden, unable to stay in the house for very long. Part of her was glad she’d only lived in this house for about two years. The memories weren’t as seared on her brain. 

On the other hand, if she still lived in the house at the Esplanade, she would be hit by memories so vivid she couldn’t decide if they would be comforting or would drive her mad. Perhaps it was best not to have the option. But she also didn’t have the comfort.

Everything had happened so fast. One minute she and Jack were fine. They were growing old together, which amused him and annoyed her as she had boldly declared age only in the mind as a person was as young as they wanted to be, but then had tweaked her back from doing something as simple as picking up a dropped pen. He’d had the good sense not to laugh at her. To her face, anyway.

Thirty years together never ceased to amaze Phryne, especially when she looked back on the sheer volume of cases they had solved and adventures they had been on. Once, while on a trip in New Zealand, they’d been standing atop a mountain in the Fiordlands, breathless after the climb and with the stunning view, and she’d asked him if he loved her.

“Only on days that end in “Y”.” he said. Such cheek. She’d rewarded him for it later that night. And the night after that.

A gust of wind blew leaves on her sweater and in her salt and pepper hair. The air was getting cooler as the afternoon went on but she stayed on the bench. She could breathe out here. It didn’t matter how many maids came to clean, Phryne still smelled the antiseptic soap and the iodine and the bleach. Jack had told her he didn’t want to be in hospital, he wanted to be at home. 

The initial diagnosis had to be wrong, she’d yelled. The doctors in Melbourne were useless. They could go to Sydney. Or fly to Europe or America. Surely someone had a cure and she was going to find it because thirty years wasn’t enough time. Jack had let her rant for days, but when she finally accepted the inevitable, they had both wept together. Fuck cancer.

She wouldn’t leave Jack’s side for a moment. Sometimes he’d begged her to do so—he didn’t want these last days to be her most powerful memories of him—but as she’d told him more times than he could count, she didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do and she’d kissed him until neither of them could bear the idea of being apart.

“Read to me.” He’d asked of her one night. “You know I love the sound of your voice.”

So, she’d read Shakespeare and Rilke. Zane Grey and Aristotle and Louis L’Amour and Jane Austen and Walt Whitman. If reading would keep him with her, she would read the catalogue of the printed word. Jack had fallen asleep to her reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was the last time.

The funeral had been a blur. Friends and colleagues had packed the church. She might have come across as rude but she couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t until later that the tears came and had alarmed Jane and Dot and Mac so that they worried she couldn’t be left alone. But life had to go on and with every departure, Phryne felt they took a piece of her with them. Jane was the last to go.

So now she sat in the garden that was slowly preparing itself for a winter’s nap. The blossoms would be back and, she supposed, so would her happiness, but right now….

Her memories of him were wrapped around her like his strong arms and she leaned back, willing to see him again and find peace. It would come in time. Probably on a day that ended in 'Y'.


End file.
